The Music of the Spheres
by Beatrice Otter
Summary: This is the music that underscores all.


**Betaed By:** Yeomanrand

 **Written for:** Dussek in Yuletide 2016

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1)

It begins with a bassoon. The horns and clarinets join in, supporting it, but it begins with a bassoon, mournful and solitary. Its rhythm and rhyme are internal, irregular, not bound to any heartbeat of rhythm.

There is not much to respond to the music of the bassoon and the waving of the conductors arms. A few atoms, that is all; but respond they do. Atoms, solitary as the instrument that guides them, gather. Then, like the wind and brass, they join together, first dust clouds, then stars and planets. The orchestra swells, the rhythm builds, and the music of the spheres guides each new development.

One planet, out of all those in all the galaxies, receives the music's focused attention. The bassoon gives way to strings. There is no harmony as the planet is torn by volcanoes and lava, but there is _rhythm_. Time exists, not as an abstract, but as an inexorable driving force of change. Melody and rhythm shape the very rocks themselves.

A discordance creates water. The rhythm recedes like the lava, making space for new melodies and new harmonies as the focus tightens. Life, a dense tonal poem, grows in the spaces of harmony and complexity. As the harmonics build, the life grows ever more complex. Without a rhythm, time has less meaning. Life stagnates.

New creatures arise—in the water, from the water, on the ground and to the air. They eat plants, they eat each other, they walk and glide and swim and fight. New rhythms arise, subside, arise again, and in response the animals become quicker. They intermingle and fight and die and live, all to a rhythm they can sense but not perceive.

The rite of life, the rite of new beginnings, is the music that directs their existence. Ineffable, inexorable, inevitable, incomprehensible as sun and moon and stars and rocks.

The beat changes, the water recedes, the plants die, the dinosaurs march onward to the rhythm of hearts and feet and time and death. The sun beats down as mercilessly as the music, but the sun has no more power than the dying creatures do to change or alter the music that controls their fate.

The rhythm collapses again, reforms, with new melodies and new harmonies—or are they merely the old harmonies restored? The waters return, crashing in again, and with it, the promise of new life from the bones of the old.

This piece ends. But the music continues. And the music moves ever on. The rhythm returns, driving movement and growth of new creatures. Mammals, this time, mammals that learn to walk upright and study the music of the spheres. Mammals who become musicians. Mammals who create the music, the rite, which has driven all things since the beginning.

Music created the musicians. And the musicians, in turn, create the music.

2)

There are many things Mickey doesn't understand about the world. He has always seen things, felt things, _heard_ things, that are exciting and wonderful beyond belief. This is why, the sorcerer tells him, he was chosen to be the new apprentice. Because most people cannot hear these things. Their lives are driven by the music they cannot hear. How this is possible, Mickey doesn't know. He wants to be like the Sorcerer, powerful, controlling the music and making it dance to his tune. And so he says yes when the Sorcerer asks, and leaves behind Minnie and Goofy and all the rest of his friends, and joins the Sorcerer.

It's a lot less glamorous than he expected. He thought he would be shaping the universe, playing with light and color and sound and bringing joy and wonder and entertainment.

Instead, he hauls water in a funny robe. (He tripped over it at the beginning a lot, before he figured out how to wear the belt so that the robe hung open at his feet.) He listens to the music, which becomes ever clearer to him the longer he stays with the Sorcerer, and he learns, and he yearns.

Oh, the sorcerer can do such wonderful things! Mickey watches, fascinated, as he shapes the light to match the sounds, dancing butterflies and ethereal beauty that Mickey aches to create himself.

As the Sorcerer goes to bed, the music calls to Mickey, and he knows what to do. He knows what the music wants! He can use the music to create a broom that will do his work for him! And although he knows the Sorcerer wouldn't like it, it _can't_ be wrong if the music wants it, can it? The beautiful music that guides the world? He's only joining in the dance and encouraging the world to join in the dance as well.

He sleeps, and dreams, and in the dreams the stars and the waves and the clouds themselves respond to the music that Mickey is directing. Or is the music directing Mickey? He can't tell, but it doesn't matter.

Not until he wakes, drenched, to find that the waves he made drowning the workshop, and realizes they will drown him, too, if he does not stop them. He must stop the thing he has created. He must stop the broom with the pail. But it does not respond, because the music does not stop; it cannot stop because the music does not stop; Mickey can shape the world to fit the notes but the music does not stop. The music does not ever stop.

And so he kills the thing he made, or tries to. But the music is more powerful than he is, and the music brings life—even to the things he does not want to live. And the water grows and Mickey panics, because that wonderful music, those enchanting sounds, the rhythms and harmonies governing his existence, they _do not answer to him_. They called him to create and they gave his creation a life beyond him, and they do not care for his good, only that the music goes on.

For the first time, Mickey is afraid. Terrified, as everything he tries and everything he thinks of, is completely ineffective before the music's demands.

And then the Sorcerer comes, and the music stills, and the water recedes, and the brooms and buckets fall lifeless to the ground.

And Mickey goes back to his drudgery, with a sting of music to encourage him to diligence.

 _The Sorcerer is not disappointed. The Sorcerer has been waiting for this. Every apprentice must learn: the music is not on their side. The music is on no-one's side. The music can lead you to do great things, perhaps; or lovely things, perhaps; or good things, perhaps; or evil things, perhaps. It will lead to action. But what_ kind _of action, that is the question._

 _This is the true gift of a sorcerer. Not in light, not in making household implements do the drudgery of the chores, not in beauty, not in power, not in good, not in evil. The true gift of a sorcerer is not even to hear the music._

 _The true gift of the sorcerer is the ability to_ resist _the music, and in that resistance, shape it. And, in so doing, shape the world itself_.

3)

The people in the valley know that a devil lives in the mountain. They know the devil's name. They know that the peak of the mountain is his leathery wings, and that is why nothing grows there. They know that at least once a year he spreads his wings and the smaller demons come and evil things—dangerous things—dance to a driving beat they cannot quite hear.

And they know that their God protects them from Czernobog's evil. They know that so long as they are good and stay indoors on that one night, they will be safe and protected.

They are wrong.

Czernobog is not evil. To be evil, one must choose to bring pain and death and fear. Czernobog has not chosen anything at all.

Czernobog isn't bad, he is merely drawn that way. Czernobog is a creature of the music. Czernobog responds to the music, and in his wings he gathers up all who, like him, were created and shaped by the darker harmonies and rhythms the villagers shun.

The villagers sing their Ave Marias, and they judge between good and evil, and they believe in a creator who will protect them, whose music they sing.

Czernobog believes in a creator, too. No, for belief implies some sort of faith or spiritual knowledge, and nothing could be further from the truth. Czernobog has no such faith; he doesn't need it. He can hear the music directly, the music that the townspeople so dimly sense. He can hear it all, the good and the bad alike, the pain and the beauty. He knows that there are two types of music, and he knows that all people—the ones in the village, and the ones the villagers are afraid of—dance to the tune of one or the other. (Sometimes to both.)

The gift of music is not given only to the good, the kind, the innocent, the pure, but to all, and to each is given a melody and a harmony that suits them.

Czernobog knows the creator of the music. Czernobog does not create the music himself, nor does he shape it; he only responds to it. If he had the choice, he would change nothing, for he loves his music, and the ones in his charge deserve the joy of the music's attention no less than the ones in the village.

Czernobog knows the music, both sides of it. And he knows it was all of it created by the same musicians. He knows there is no good, no evil. There is only the dance. And so he spreads his wings, and calls his people, and dances the night away.

And, in the morning, the sun comes up, the church bells chime.

The dance continues.

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"There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres."—Pythagoras


End file.
